Pierce County Fair

The Pierce County Fair runs four days in mid-August at Frontier Park in Graham, a 71-acre county complex of wooded and turf ground on Meridian Avenue East. The 2026 fair ran Thursday through Sunday, August 13–16, under the theme “Pirates of the FAIRibbean.” Each morning at 10:30 the day opened with the anthem on the Rainier Stage. Joe Stoddard performed it on Thursday, Tennyson Ford on Friday and Lily Langsmith on Saturday. On Sunday the Tacoma Pierce County Jazz band played it.

The ground is what the fair’s manager talks about. “The location sets our fair apart from other fairs around the state that take place primarily on asphalt,” Shelly Bennett told ShowCase Magazine in 2022. “Our visitors have a more personal experience and the park setting and hometown feel create lifelong attendees.” The magazine counted it as one of only a few fairs in Washington held in a park. Because Frontier Park is a public park, the fair has to be built into it. In 2022 the county closed the park from July 26 to August 19 so it could be transformed for the fair and then returned to its original design.

Two stages and the midway

Live music, comedy and dance run on two stages, the Rainier and the Sun Top, and are free with admission. The 2026 bill included:

• The 56th Army Band, based at Joint Base Lewis–McChord just south of Tacoma.
• Jim Cruise, billed as the Spoonman.
• Matt Henry, a World Juggling Champion.
• Cap’n Arr!, a pirate comedy act created by Won Israel, which suited the year’s theme.
• Gimme Shelter, a Rolling Stones tribute.
• Whiskey Creek, a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute.
• Ian Dobson’s Steel Drum Party, playing Caribbean steel drums and Latin rhythms.
• A Scuffed Boots dance lesson on Sunday afternoon.

At 6:30 on Thursday evening the Rainier Stage held the 4-H Fashion Revue, in which members model clothing they have sewn.

The midway changes from year to year. Rides named on the fair’s 2026 page included Alibaba, the Loop O’Plane, the Rave, the Rainier Wheel, the Cobra Coaster and the Surf Shack. A one-day wristband covers unlimited rides and two games. In 2019 the rides, games and food concessions came from Rainier Amusements, a family-owned Pacific Northwest company that has run amusements for more than 60 years. The Pierce Prairie Post’s preview of the 2026 fair listed the food as food trucks, scones, popcorn, cotton candy and corn on the cob.

Barns, arenas and the Youth Market Sale

The same paper listed the animals: pigs, cows, horses, llamas, alpacas, cats, dogs, rabbits and chickens. 4-H and FFA members show them in fitting, showmanship and type classes across the barns and arenas. Horse showmanship begins at 9 in the morning, and cats, dairy goats and other classes begin at 10. Dairy cattle are shown in the Howard Young Arena. The same arena holds the Youth Market Sale, an auction supporting young 4-H and FFA members, which begins at 6 p.m. The Cat Barn holds a cat costume contest, and the Poultry Barn holds a poultry costume contest.

4-H archery and air rifle shooting run all day at the Archery Range. Children make stick horses and compete with them at the Kid Zone, sew a stuffed animal at Critter Kids, and take horse trail rides around the grounds. Free caricatures are drawn from noon to 8. Dock-diving dogs, a parrot act and a strolling T-Rex move through the crowd.

A 2019 economic study prepared for Pierce County named other children’s events:

• The Kid’s Pedal Tractor Pull, a race of weight-loaded tractors.
• Wool Busters, a rodeo with miniature bucking chutes.
• The Big Bubble Show.
• On the last day, the National Chicken Racing Association Poultry Drag Race, open to 4-H members with chickens entered at the fair.

Exhibitors and vendors often camp on the grounds through the run. For Pierce County’s 4-H clubs the fair is the annual showcase. The study adds that it also serves as practice for the Washington State Fair.

The study counted just over 20,000 visitors in 2019, about 5 percent more than in 2018. It found that the peak of the preceding twenty years came in 1998, when 27,400 attended. A Pierce County proclamation for the 2026 fair gave different figures: approximately 400 exhibitors and more than 10,000 annual visitors. The fair itself is a cooperative effort of Pierce County and the non-profit Pierce County Fair Association. The Association credited more than 150 volunteers for the 2022 edition.

From Benston Grange to Frontier Park

The fair’s website keeps scrapbooks of fair memories by decade under the heading Memory Lane, and dates gatherings at Frontier Park to 1908. The fair’s own account of itself begins in 1947, with a Junior Fair in Sumner.

The Hill & Dale District of garden clubs wrote a history of the fair for its 75th anniversary, and that history gives more detail. It calls the first event a 4-H fair that drew youth members from all over the county, with few entries and very few categories. It also says the fair had no permanent home for its first three years. It began at Benston Grange, moved to Woodland School, then to Fruitland Grange, and finally settled on the Sumner High School grounds.

The garden clubs’ history traces the changes that followed:

• 1952: The fair was renamed the Pierce County Junior Fair and incorporated. Frank Ballou of Puyallup became its first fair manager, and Dr. Vitt Ferrucci of Puyallup became the first president of its board.
• 1953: The fair ran three full days instead of two and a half, and chose its first fair queen.
• 1957: The 27th annual State Gladiolus Show came to the Junior Fair. It brought entries from other states and Canada and hung 50 baskets along Sumner’s Main Street.
• 1959: An adult flower show opened in the Sumner High School gymnasium. The State Agriculture Department required adult exhibitors for a full county class B fair, and the garden clubs held flower shows to help supply them. Mrs. Englund and Mrs. Sibbert co-chaired, and a trophy went to the exhibitor with the most blue ribbons.
• 1960: Pierce County joined the Department of Agriculture in supporting the fair. For the first time, several hundred premium checks, totaling $2,500, were mailed to exhibitors.
• 1963: The Puyallup Rotarians served a pancake breakfast for exhibitors and superintendents. The history calls it an annual tradition still anticipated.
• 1967: The board voted to drop “junior” from the name.
• 1968: The fair moved to Frontier Park in Graham, where it has stayed. Sumner and Puyallup service clubs set about building a permanent fair environment there.
• 1976: The fair added a day and began running Thursday through Sunday, under the theme “A Past to Remember, A Future to Mold.”

The Floral Building

The flower show followed the fair to Graham in 1969 and was housed in a canvas tent. In July 1973 volunteers built a Floral Building, 24 by 40 feet, under Fair Board President Dave Van Hulle. The Capital District of Garden Clubs, more than 100 clubs, paid to complete it, and the cement class at Bates Vocational Technical Institute helped build it as a classroom project. The first show in the new building had 150 entries.

In 1975 twenty-four clubs east of Tacoma left the Capital District. They named themselves Hill and Dale because they covered the valley and foothills of the Cascades, and they took on sponsorship of the building. By 1976 the building held 495 entries, and the history records, “We have outgrown our building.” In 1989 a Bates Vocational School carpentry class donated its labor, with grant money, to lengthen it to 24 by 72 feet.

Year by year the record fills with names and themes. In 1977 LaDonna Bean, age 9, won the most blue ribbons in junior horticulture. In 1985 the building was filled with cones of cotton and stuffed animals for “Kids, Kritters, & Kotton Kandy,” with entrants aged 5 to 85. The fair marked 50 years in 1995 with 692 exhibits in the building. In 2007 the building held a horse made of flower pots. For “At the Hop” in 2008, hostesses wore poodle skirts beside a soda fountain. By 2009 the clubs were in their third year of getting children to plant shoes.

In 2016 the show dropped National Garden Club judging for the Danish Method, and the fair moved all entries to online registration. That year Hill & Dale planted a pee gee hydrangea in memory of Betty Backstrom, the fair manager, who died in 2016. In 2018 children made 135 butterfly nets and hunted bees hidden around the fairgrounds, then brought them back to the building for a honey stick.

The 2020 theme, “Bees & Honey in 2020,” became “Bee Safe in 2020.” COVID-19 canceled the in-person fair, and flowers, animals and entertainment all went online. The virtual flower show had 465 entries, and every exhibitor received a “virtual ribbon.” In the off season the county laid sidewalks to the building, which improved access but took out the grass in front of it. In 2021 the aisles inside ran one way, and the clubs planted up men’s jeans around the tree.

For the 75th fair in 2022, three gardens in front of the building stood for yesterday, today and tomorrow. The clubs’ history closes with forecasts. For 2047, the fair’s hundredth year, it gives the theme as “Tractor Wheels & Cowboy Heels for 100 years.”